1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of distributed active knowledge and process bases. More specifically, the present invention discloses a system that enables multiple types of data, processes, and services to be shared within a collaborative framework over a network, the internet, or wireless media.
2. Background of the Invention
The Internet provides a unique opportunity for members of businesses, organizations, and other groups to collaborate and share information easily and efficiently. Online service networks have begun to utilize the potential of the Internet by allowing members to create collaboration groups. These groups incorporate several shared services, including bulletin board systems (BBS), email, and files, which are designed to facilitate collaboration. Users can create messages or store files, and share them with their entire group.
However, existing online collaborative services allow users to share only a limited set of data types, usually restricted to messages and files, with a rare addition of a shared organizer or other similar service. This narrows collaborative actions to a small number of fields, and introduces limitations on the scope of possible collaboration and data sharing. Though some users are satisfied with restricting their collaborative efforts to solely sharing files and sending group messages, such systems are often insufficient in scope to allow for efficient workflow in a real collaborative setting.
Existing services on the Internet also limit their collaborative structure to data objects, and exclude processes. As a result of this exclusion, the large amounts of data that can accumulate in a group knowledge base cannot be mapped to better processing methods. As the number of data objects increases, it becomes more and more difficult to utilize the information contained within them to efficiently accomplish specified goals. Current system structures do not permit users to collaboratively add unknown data type objects and a service for this type of data, modify the methods through which existing data objects are processed to best suit the goals of a group. They also preclude the creation and implementation of pre-programmed processes, services, or scenarios, for distributed processing, further curbing collaborative efficiency.
Furthermore, existing systems own and fully control their collaborative environments. This limits collaboration to a single system, and does not permit systems to share data or other system elements. Data, process, and service sharing between systems belonging to different organizations is an even more complicated issue, since there is no current way for a system to determine and specify elements appropriate for free public sharing, elements that is to be shared on a pay/per use basis, and elements that is to be exchanged for related values.
Finally, current online collaboration is limited by the willingness of users to share their data. Even in a collaborative setting, users rarely desire to make their data available to all members of their group, and make adequate security a condition for sharing information. The backbone of any online collaborative effort is security, and the current methods of assigning access privileges as a way to make specified data objects available to the appropriate viewers are inadequate. Existing systems allow limited role-based privileges for all collaborative data. A common system has limited privilege levels (in most cases two levels). In such a system, if a user's profile defines her as an ‘administrator’, she has read, write, and delete access to all group data. If a user is defined as a ‘member’, she can read and add messages, but not edit or delete existing messages. This kind of system is limiting and does not encourage data sharing, since it does not give users control over their data. Users cannot create new custom roles on the fly, cannot select who has certain kinds of access to the information they choose to share, and must provide the same level of access to all members within a privilege class.
Willingness of users to share is also limited by their knowledge of other systems elements inside and outside the user system and their values. A new mechanism is required to provide and periodically update this information inside the system and between systems.
Therefore, a need exists in the art for collaborative systems that permits increased flexibility in the types of data that can be shared, that allows data, processes, and services to be created and modified within the same collaborative framework, that permits data to be appropriately mapped to said processes, provides and updates periodically knowledge about available objects, processes, and services, and their values, allows separate systems to negotiate multiple forms of collaboration, and contains sufficiently flexible levels of data security in order to foster online collaboration.